Wading into one of the great tech mysteries of recent memory, Australian Craig Wright has declared that he is the founder of the cryptocurrency bitcoin. But the evidence he has offered up isn’t convincing everyone.
Wright says he revealed his identity in order to share valuable research and end the myths surrounding the popular virtual currency—not because he wants to acclaim. But the Redditors at r/bitcoin seem to be in agreement that at best Wright hasn’t provided sufficient evidence and at worst he’s a fraudster.
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The evidence in question is a signed digital message used in the first-ever bitcoin transaction. That transaction was between the alias Satoshi Nakamoto and Hal Finney, who died in 2014. Various media outlets have investigated the real identity of Satoshi, with Wired and Gizmodo naming Wright in late 2015. A year earlier, Newsweek, in a controversial cover story, announced that the founder was in fact an 65-year-old unemployed engineer from California. That man insists the assertion is false, and has sued Newsweek.
Threads on both r/bitcoin and Github about the latest claim seem to arrive at the same conclusion: that the digital signature Wright provided is garbage. Essentially, commenters argue, he could have just made it up and matched it with the publicly available information of the first bitcoin transaction.
Although many Redittors aren’t convinced, Gavin Andresen, the chief scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation, defends Wright’s claims. Andresen met with Wright personally and verified the signatures. He believes that the information Wright possess could only come from Satoshi.
If Wright is a faker, it is unclear what his end game would be. In his interview with the BBC he states emphatically that he will not claim any rewards for founding bitcoin, nor will he make any more media appearances. But if he really wants to hold on to the title as the digital currency’s founder he’s going to need to come up with some more evidence.
